Abstract
The crisis stability in South Asia remains severely fragile, given the nature of India-Pakistan relations. The May 2025 post-Pahalgam four-day conflict has further highlighted the challenges for regional crisis stability. Since the nuclearization of South Asia, India has been trying to carve out a space for a limited war under the nuclear overhang against Pakistan. New Delhi’s continuous efforts to carve out space eventually led to its adoption of the Dynamic Response Strategy. The May 2025 India-Pakistan conflict saw India’s partial implementation of the Dynamic Response Strategy and simultaneously revealed some limitations for New Delhi. India is now modernizing its military to overcome those limitations. The research paper employs the conceptual framework of crisis stability to analyze the key aspects of India’s post-Pahalgam military modernization. It examines the developments related to an integrated and multi-layered air defence network, advancements in missile technology, the restructuring of the Indian army deployed along Pakistan’s border and the Line of Control and developments related to drone-based surveillance and drone-based precision strike capabilities. India perceives that these developments will enhance its capacity to effectively escalate conflict horizontally under the nuclear overhang with controlled escalation. The study finds that the aforementioned military modernizations simultaneously incentivize India for a first strike, encourage pre-emptive strike temptations, strengthen counter force targeting capabilities and deepen conventional-nuclear entanglement, thereby creating implications for the crisis stability in South Asia.
This research paper was published by the BTTN Journal. The full paper can be read here https://bttn.org.pk/ojs/index.php/BTTN_Journal/article/view/272
Fakhar Alam is Research Officer at the Center for International Strategic Studies (CISS), Islamabad.
